In Opposition to the State Arms Manufacturing Conference

So, the Western Australian state government wants to join the arms race with gusto. See here.  This grotesque participation in the manufacturing and distribution of death is normalised and familiarised with little opposition. Some people are peacefully protesting at the venue today, but the mainstream media seem to have no problem with this deathcult war-profiteering event. In fact, the local newspaper writes it up under 'manufacturing'!

Graphology Spectre 24: against the arms industry

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

demarcations to prevent death finding its way in.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

and as we finish the job arms manufacturers play with fire.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

and Defence West gambols with notions of Westernising death.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

firebreaks that won’t stop the attack they call ‘defence’.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

so the State and its profiteer-cronies can send fire outwards.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

while in the casino-resort the gamblers in death deploy semantics.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us

while the ‘arms conference’ fine-tunes and sanitises death.

            John Kinsella

Big Sky Geraldton and False Claims of Colonial Thieves

By Tracy

Last weekend saw Geraldton's Big Sky Readers and Writers Festival, an annual literary event. This year we all went up because John was there along with Yamaji poet and artist, Charmaine Papertalk Green to read from and discuss the poetry book on which they have collaborated, False Claims of Colonial Thieves.

To quote the website of the publisher, Magabala Books, 

“Papertalk Green and Kinsella call into question what we think we know about our country, colonisation, land and identity. Each poem is part of a striking conversation that surrounds topics such as childhood, history, life, love, mining, death, respect and cultural diversity. This extraordinary publication weaves two differing lives and experiences together and rarely pauses for breath.”

Here are a few photographs from the event for this book, hosted by Trudi Cornish & Nola Gregory, held in the Geraldton Library.

Charmaine Papertalk Green with Trudi Cornish, Acting Manager, Libraries & Heritage

John Kinsella reads at the Geraldton Library

Charmaine Papertalk Green reads from her poems in False Claims of Colonial Thieves

Save Lemnos Street Bushland: Perth, Western Australia

It's essential 'corridor' (and all) bushland is saved in Perth, a city whose remaining green and 'natural' spaces are being eaten by development. Here's a petition people long committed to the saving of the Lemnos Street bushland have created. And here's a 'save the place' poem:

Lemnos Street Bushland

Exemplar of life, linkage, corridor

to hold the underpinnings of all aliveness —

the banksia leaves serrate the breeze

channelling through, honeyeaters

decrypting lanterns far more

illuminating than LEDs.

If deleted, the fill-in reduces breath

and sight, limits every exchange

we make within and beyond the self.

Let live so you — we — live. Skink

in sunlight is rapture. And listen

to the ensemble of leaves, stalks, branches!

We come down from the wheatbelt

every week to take our son to a language

class just down the road from Lemnos Street —

I say, They’re going to delete all that bush,

it’s so easy for them to do. Each week we watch.

A fortnight ago, heading down, we saw three

Carnaby’s cockatoos dead on the highway —

hit by a truck, then no doubt a questioning

bird, lost, was hit searching for flight. Traffic

rolls on. Why do we learn to speak?

The answers come quick, in what

is learnt, what has been taught.

React. Distress. Recover. Forget?

Exemplar of life, linkage, corridor

to hold the underpinnings of all aliveness —

let live so you —we — live. Cockatoo

in sunlight is rapture. And listen

to the ensemble of birds! And listen

to banksias reach further than light.

            John Kinsella